Book aimed at middle and high school audiences on the experience of Japanese Americans during World War II, that focuses equally on the wartime incarceration and on military service.

Synopsis

Fighting for Honor
is divided into nine chapters. Chapter one begins with the
attack on Pearl Harbor
and briefly covers the events leading to
Executive Order 9066
and the forced removal of Japanese Americans. Chapter two moves back in time to cover the prewar history of Japanese Americans, the discrimination they faced, and their status just prior to the war. While chapter three looks at life in the concentration camps and chapter six at
resettlement
, chapters four, five, seven, and eight focus narrowly on aspects of military service: basic training of the
100th Infantry Battalion
and
442nd Regimental Combat Team
in chapter four; the 100th Battalion's role in the battle for Monte Cassino in Italy in early 1944 in chapter five; the October 1944
Rescue of the Lost Battalion
in chapter seven; and the breaking of the Gothic Line, the
Military Intelligence Service
and a summary of awards in chapter eight. The final chapter covers the difficulties Japanese Americans faced after the war, but cites their ultimate triumph over time, citing the stories of
Daniel Inouye
and
John Aiso
, and ending with a lengthy passage from
Farewell to Manzanar
.

The book is illustrated by many photographs integrated into the text and includes a chronology and list of additional resources.

Additional Information

Author Michael L. Cooper (1950– ) was born in Kentucky and raised in a small town there. He later moved to New York to become a writer. Since 1988, he has written over fifteen books for young adults, most on aspects of American history, and many on the experiences of African Americans and other ethnic minority groups. His 2004 book
Dust to Eat: Drought and Depression in the 1930s
won the 2005 Golden Kite Award for best nonfiction book from the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. In addition to
Fighting for Honor
, Cooper also authored
Remembering Manzanar: Life in a Japanese Relocation Camp
(2002) for Clarion Books.

Fighting for Honor
is marred by many historical errors both major and minor. The most significant of these are misstatements about the impact and significance of the
alien land laws
, unrest in the concentration camps and the role of the
loyalty questionnaire
, and the origins of the 100th Battalion. On the land laws, Cooper claims in two places that they "prohibited people who were not U.S. citizens from owning property in the state" (page 19; also 105). In fact, the California law—as well as laws in other states inspired by California—specifically targeted Asian Americans by using the phrase "aliens ineligible for citizenship." Aliens who were white (or black)—and thus eligible for naturalization by federal law—could own land. In chapter three, the author attributes "angry disturbances" in "late 1942"—likely the uprisings in
Poston
and
Manzanar
—to the loyalty questionnaire! (He also misdates a "violent riot" at
Tule Lake
as taking place in November 1942 rather than a year later, November 1943, pages 37–38.) In fact he has it backwards—the unrest in the camps at the end of 1942 further influenced the
War Relocation Authority
to try to separate the "loyal" and "disloyal" so that the latter could be
segregated
, which led to the ill-fated questionnaires in early 1943. (The author places the questionnaires in November 1942 in the chronology, page 106; this dating could be source of this error.) Finally, he seems not to realize that the original members of the 100th Battalion came from the ranks of prewar draftees and enlistees in Hawai'i in first suggesting they were made up of those who volunteered for the 442nd (45) and later, in a section about the 100th, writing that the 5,000 Nisei in the army prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor "were reassigned or discharged and sent to relocation camps" (46), suggesting he did not realize that the members of the 100th came out of that group of 5,000.

Among the other more minor errors: misspelling the names of
Minoru Yasui
(as "Minour," page 16 and 17) and Jim Tazoi (as "Tazio," 80; both names are misspelled the same way more than once); calling Nisei war hero
Ben Kuroki
"a native of Kansas" (68; Kuroki, one of the most famous Japanese Americans in the decade after the war, was the subject of a popular biography by Ralph Martin titled
Boy from Nebraska
); claiming that residents of Hawai'i became American citizens in 1900 (45; of course Issei in Hawaii remained as ineligible for citizenship as their mainland counterparts); claiming that blocks consisted of fourteen barracks and that each barracks "housed 250 to 300 persons" (31; the number of barracks per block was different in the various camps, with most having twelve, thirteen or fourteen and Heart Mountain having twenty-four; in all camps but Heart Mountain, each block typically had 250 to 300 people); claiming that three were killed in the
Manzanar riot
(37; two were killed); claiming the first "MIS soldiers were recruited in the summer of 1943 from among the Nisei who were training at Camp Shelby" (89; 58 Nisei were students in the first
Military Intelligence Service Language School
when it began operations in November 1941, while others were recruited from the concentration camps in the fall of 1942).

For More Information

Learn more in the Densho Encyclopedia, a free on-line resource covering the key concepts, people, events, and organizations that played a role in the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Genre

Chronology

Point of View

Theme

Availability

Free On Web

Teacher Guide

Learn more in the Densho Encyclopedia, a free on-line resource covering the key concepts, people, events, and organizations that played a role in the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

This material is based upon work assisted by a grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Useful Links

The Resource Guide to Media on the Japanese American Removal and Incarceration is a free project of Densho. Our mission is to preserve the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II before their memories are extinguished. We offer these irreplaceable firsthand accounts, coupled with historical images and teacher resources, to explore principles of democracy, and promote equal justice for all.